In my favorite episode of the now defunct, deeply pleasurable, and totally bisexual television series Dickinson, it's Christmas and Louisa May Alcott comes to dinner. Played by Zosia Mamet, Alcott has just made $35 from her first book, and she will not stop talking about money. Read more
Salman Rushdie, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, insists that he is not, like so many media members before him, going to Substack-at least not full-time. He won't be publishing his next book on the newsletter platform. Instead, he's taken an advance from the company to fool around with "whatever comes into" his head. This will apparently include a serialized novella. Read more
The subscription newsletter platform Substack announced on Wednesday it had signed an exclusive deal with Salman Rushdie - but he is just the latest in a growing number of authors making the leap to write serialised fiction delivered straight to the inboxes of subscribers who pay a monthly fee.
The first 400 words of my novel, Adjustments, were written mostly to prove to my publisher, who had asked for the story, that I had no novel to write. I was a non-fiction, just-the-facts writer who had read little fiction as an adult, let alone had any interest in writing it. Read more
It's often lamented that the art of deferred gratification has vanished from our instantly downloadable culture, but the increasing popularity of serialised novels suggests this may not be the whole story. Read more
The big new trend in digital publishing in 2016 is serialized novels that are delivered to you via an app or directly to the email inbox. Large publishers and a number of startups believe that most people do not read complete novels on their phone, but do have time to read a chapter a day.
As Alison Flood reported in The Guardian as the project got under way, it's been almost 200 years since Charles Dickens took Britain by storm with the serialization of his first major novel, The Pickwick Papers. And now, "American novelist Joshua Cohen is setting himself a larger target - of the internet at large - as he embarks on an a mission to reinterpret Dickens' debut live online." Read more
This website offers a wide range of tips on photography and provides an easily accessible guide for the amateur providing guidance and suggestions for photographing everything from babies to pets, headshots to nature. There's also helpful information on equipment.
‘Even if you are writing stark realism, I think there is magic in this age group, because they are at an age at which possibility is at its most colossal. They are still on the brink of becoming the person that they will be, and there is magic inherent there. I wanted to say to children, "I think you have been underestimated.
"What's going on with the book market?" an agent asked me this week. The big books are not showing up, the débuts are passing by too fleetingly, while genre titles, the brands, and backlist books are shifting to the centre ground and taking root. In short, for this year's trends, look to last year's hits. Rinse and repeat.
In my previous blog, I outlined five ways in which publishing can, and likely will, use AI to streamline and make its operations more efficient. I'd like to turn your attention to how AI can help sell more books.
Labour achieved a landslide win in yesterday's general election, with Sir Keir Starmer due to enter Number 10 Downing Street for his first term in office.
A new survey commissioned by the Publishers Association (PA) has shown that children's reading for pleasure remains a priority for adults across the country, despite a decline in reading.